#1:Advice from a Democratic Unicorn
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana — He won’t make any lists of 2028 Democratic presidential hopefuls, but both parties would do well to learn from the example of outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Winning twice in a state where the last two Democratic presidential candidates didn’t reach 40 percent, Edwards forged alliances across racial and partisan lines to rebuild Louisiana’s finances and leave the state with a budget surplus and its lowest-ever unemployment rate, 3.3 percent. And while states to the east and west, Mississippi and Texas, have been battered by the closures of rural hospitals, not one such facility here has closed on Edwards’ watch because he did what his neighboring governors refused and accepted the federal dollars to expand Medicaid.
Perhaps more remarkable at a moment of extreme polarization is that he won at all. The only Deep South Democratic governor, Edwards won in 2015 against a sitting senator (if a scandal-plagued one) and then again in 2019 in the face of multiple visits to the state by then-President Donald Trump for the governor’s GOP rival.
Much has been made in the political world of the governor’s heterodox views on guns and abortion. (He supports gun rights and opposes abortion rights.) These positions make him a non-starter in any Democratic presidential primary.
But there is more to life than White House viability. And I think there was more to Edwards’ appeal than his defying the national party line on culture-war issues.
“The majority of people in our state appreciated a civil political discourse,” the governor told me earlier this week, sitting in a governor’s mansion bedecked with both holiday decorations and moving boxes. “They appreciate that I was really working hard with Republicans to make progress on key issues and that I compromised and that they compromised. We didn’t just dig our heels in.”
In his low-key manner Edwards offered this as parting wisdom: “To the extent that might motivate some people nationally to change the way they speak about their adversaries, we’re not enemies.”
But hold on, this is no mere high-fiber paean to civility. There’s politics here. (And not just the possibility that Edwards may try to run again for governor, more on that below.)
When disasters repeatedly ravaged Louisiana, as is happening more often with climate change imperiling the state’s coast line, the governor demonstrated competence and worked with Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden to mitigate the damage.
“It was a no brainer for me to be the best possible partner I could be to Barack Obama, to work well with Donald Trump and do the same thing with Joe Biden,” said Edwards. “Because you never want to have a bad relationship because any time you need something from Washington the answer can always be no.”
And for all the talk about his small-town roots in Amite, Louisiana, Edwards found political success in the same fashion as most modern Democrats: By building a coalition of racial minorities and moderate whites in cities and suburbs. In a state infamous for its corruption, a West Pointer with a duty-honor-country bearing was as appealing to Black voters in Shreveport as he was to whites in Uptown New Orleans, even if his manner was more vanilla than Tabasco.
Which is to say that at a moment voters keep enabling hair-on-fire provocation, Edwards’ success demonstrated there’s a parallel incentive structure that rewards competence, biography and normalcy.
Call it the vibes political economy. With local media decimated and politics increasingly nationalized and tribal, the electorate is mostly gleaning information about public affairs from a motley mix of social media, push alerts and whatever corner-of-the-eye television and print coverage they take in each day.
With partisan voters, and especially in primaries, this redounds to the benefit of figures such as Trump and his imitators in Congress, who know the way to command attention in this new world is with undistilled bombast.
However, with the broader electorate, the considerable political center, I think playing against that type can carry its own benefits. Exhausted and confused voters will default to boring if it seems normal. The 2020 presidential results are the best evidence.
Yet equally compelling is the success of the governors who’ve managed to prevail in forbidding states. Perceptions can be paramount.
Consider Edwards but also Kentucky’s Gov. Andy Beshear, who won a larger-than-expected reelection last month because of his own competence on disaster relief and the just-Andy familiarity he built up with voters during the pandemic.
Or look further north, to Republican governors who’ve managed to win in blue states. Vermont’s Phil Scott, Maryland’s Larry Hogan and Massachusetts’ Charlie Baker were elected and reelected because, with aptitude and that same guy-next-door familiarity, they established their own identities separate from their national party. Similarly, the only governor to defeat an incumbent last year, Nevada’s Joe Lombardo, won in part because his biography as a former Las Vegas police officer let him craft his own image apart from his party in a year when the GOP Senate nominee in the state fell short.
Yet all of these governors had fairly lonely victories and were, or are, confronted with legislatures dominated by the opposition party.
Edwards, for his part, leaves at a moment Louisiana Democrats are at a modern nadir. After holding back the tide of realignment, this state now looks much like its neighbors, with Republicans commanding supermajorities and Democrats increasingly confined to Black or urban white precincts.
Edwards is mildly defensive when I raise the topic about his role as party leader — “it’s not like I’ve been totally absent and uninvolved” — but makes no apologies.
“I decided to pursue bipartisan successes, put the focus on governor as opposed to the word Democrat, and I believe that had I not done that my exit interview would’ve been four years ago,” he told me.
Yes, it is considerably easier for governors, who are inherently dealing with matters less national and polarizing than members of Congress, to overcome metastasizing red-and-blue politics, in which states vote their presidential preference in statewide elections.
But Edwards thinks that for Democrats to better compete on more hostile terrain between the coasts they must step closer toward the political center — and not just on messaging.
“We typically say we think we just need to communicate better — that’s sort of a foolish answer,” he said. “Because that means you don’t really have to evolve on your positions.”
One issue Edwards believes his party must better accommodate the electorate is toughening border security.
“Joe Biden ought to be cutting the best deal he can cut on immigration right now,” said the governor. “Get the money for Ukraine and Israel and he will stop bleeding on that issue.”
Edwards’ advice: “Go to the center, get a good compromise — and do that more often.”
The governor said he has a strong relationship with the president, his fellow Roman Catholic. And when I half-jokingly floated the idea that Edwards could become U.S. Ambassador at the Vatican in a Biden second term — an appointment oft mentioned in the Baton Rouge rumor mill since Biden’s election — he took it quite seriously.
“On that particular job, I can tell you that’s one that would be extremely difficult for me to turn down,” Edwards said, citing the faith he shares with his wife, Donna.
He insisted, however, that he has little interest in Washington and certainly not the Senate (Chuck Schumer, if you’re listening …)
More remarkable to me was that Edwards said that, in the two months since Louisiana’s Mike Johnson became House speaker, he’s not heard once from the lawmaker about ways they could work for Louisiana.
Were past Louisiana titans such as Billy Tauzin or John Breaux or Bob Livingston to have had such clout they would have sent everything back from Washington to Louisiana that wasn’t nailed down in the Capitol.
“I would feel better about Mike Johnson being speaker of the House if I felt he was someone who really believed in making government work,” said Edwards, adding: “But if you don’t believe in earmarks, if you don’t believe in making government work, if you’re not willing to use the weight of your office to benefit your state then there’s very little upside.”
Still, ever wanting to project bipartisanship, Edwards did allow that he was a lame duck and, well, Johnson has been a little busy since taking his new job.
In any event, the governor is more focused on the man who’s taking his job: Gov.-elect Jeff Landry, a Republican.
A former congressman turned state attorney general, Landry represents a familiar archetype here (Cajun Country wheeler-dealer) updated for the times (MAGA!).
Edwards was skeptical that Landry would dare repeal the Medicaid expansion and warned his successor against backing away from the state’s efforts to lure clean-energy companies. Louisiana’s economic gains have come in part from “investments in low carbon and no carbon energy,” Edwards said, and Landry will want those jobs.
“I just believe he is going to be good in this space, although I wish he would talk about it differently,” said the governor, a polite way of stating he wished Landry would stop calling climate change “a hoax.”
That Edwards is being succeeded by a Trump-allied Republican — and one who prevailed without a runoff in Louisiana’s all-party primary — illustrates what a bare political cupboard the governor is leaving behind for his party.
In fairness, the only way to have blocked Landry may have been with a center-right Republican who could have eked into the runoff and then cobbled together bipartisan support. The moment that Republican Rep. Garret Graves declined to run for governor likely extinguished those hopes.
Edwards acknowledged speaking to Graves about running, something that has been rumored in Louisiana and Washington for months.
“I did not necessarily encourage him to do it,” the governor told me before conceding a bit.
“I told him it was a wonderful job, that we need good public servants at the highest level and I did tell him that it’s something that he should really consider,” Edwards said.
Graves now may wish he had run because nobody’s political fortunes this side of Kevin McCarthy have changed so dramatically of late. After McCarthy convinced Graves to stay by making him the de facto deputy speaker — layering the actual second-in-command, Louisianan Steve Scalise — Graves helped negotiate the debt ceiling deal with the White House this spring.
He also pushed an ally at home, Stephen Waguespack, into the governor’s race in a failed attempt to block Landry. Well, now McCarthy has been ousted and is resigning from Congress at the end of the month, Landry is about to be sworn in as governor and, wouldn’t you know it, the federal courts are requiring Louisiana to redraw their congressional boundaries to add a second Black-majority district.
Landry has already called for a special session next month to craft the new district and, well, House Republicans should count on being minus-one in Louisiana after the next election because the new governor will be happy to use a court order to exact political revenge by drawing Graves out of his seat.
The most likely Democrat to claim the seat is state senator Cleo Fields, a Baton Rouge Democrat who served two terms in Congress in the 1990s. In Louisiana lore, Fields is known for being caught on an FBI tape taking a stack of $25,000 in cash from former Governor Edwin Edwards, who instructed Fields to be sure “everyone is careful how that's handed out.” (Fields, unlike Edwin Edwards, was never charged with a crime.)
Oh, and did I mention that New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell is apparently under federal scrutiny, with FBI agents interviewing her donors and the mayor notably declining to say at a recent press conference if she had received a target letter from prosecutors?
If it all sounds like a return to form — proof that Louisiana’s enduring pastimes remain football, eating and politicians getting their beaks wet — well wait until you hear that Landry just appointed the 26-year-old executive director of the South Dakota GOP to head Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. (Landry and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem share a political counselor: former Trump lieutenant Corey Lewandowski.)
“Anybody who thinks we’re going to be some boring-ass place where everything functions is going to have to move somewhere else,” threatened, or maybe promised, Mary-Patricia Wray, a lobbyist who is serving on Landry’s transition team. Wray praised Landry as “transactional.”
This all relates to the legacy of Edwards, and viability of Democrats in red states, because the only job the governor may covet more than the Holy See is the one he’s about to give up.
Before I sat down with him, Edwards conducted his last news conference with the state press corps. Surrounded by his cabinet and joined by his wife, the governor stood before a ceiling-scraping Christmas tree and used the session to mostly take a final political victory lap.
Except at the end of his remarks.
“I’ve loved the job I’ve been doing,” Edwards said, before noting that the state constitution bars him from serving more than two terms “at least not without a break.”
Then he said “I don’t say never” and “I’m not going anywhere” and “I love our state too much, love our people too much, to see them suffer needlessly and so while I have no expectation, no intention, of running again, I can see that, should my wife bless it and the circumstances warrant it, that I would do that.”
Okay, governor, we got the hint.
There is a precedent. The other Gov. Edwards — he of FBI tapes, prison time and wizard-under-the-sheets quips — reclaimed the office after he served back to back terms. Actually, he won two more, non-consecutive terms, the second time most famously when Louisiana chose the crook over the Klansman, David Duke, in 1991.
It's easy to see this Gov. Edwards attempting a comeback with a call for, yes, competence and normalcy.
Louisiana, he told me, is “right of center but not right of right.”
Then he gestured out of his office, back toward the residential section of the mansion where the gubernatorial portraits hang on the wall.
“You can look in that stairwell over there: Since 1972 every Democratic governor has been replaced by a Republican who has been replaced by a Democrat who has been replaced by a Republican,” he said. “That’s the trend line we’ve been on for a long time.”
Sunday, December 31, 2023
Advice from a Democratic Unicorn
Saturday, December 30, 2023
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Friday, December 29, 2023
Our hearts hurt': Men impacted by abortion restrictions share their stories
#1:Our hearts hurt': Men impacted by abortion restrictions share their stories
ABC News brought together 18 women from across 10 states who say their medical care was impacted by abortion bans -- bringing some of them to the brink. These women said they have been turned away in medical emergencies for not being sick enough and had their health care delayed or denied due to state laws.
The women were not alone. Their partners walked alongside them on the journey, and together they faced the life-changing fallout from abortion bans in their home states. This story details these men’s experiences -- in their own words.
Stephen Anaya was thrilled when he heard the news that his wife Kristen was pregnant with a girl. The two had been trying to have a baby for more than two years, and both had medical procedures to help make their dream a reality.
But when Kristen Anaya's water broke earlier than it should have -- when she was only 15 weeks along -- and she lost nearly all her amniotic fluid, the couple faced the heartbreaking news that nothing could be done to save the fetus.
Looking back, Stephen Anaya said that losing their baby, who they named Tylee, was "devastating" and hurt him a lot -- but that quickly turned to worry and fear for his wife.
"When someone tells you -- for me, on my side -- you could potentially lose your wife, after me losing my daughter, was very scary," Anaya told ABC News in an interview.
"I could potentially be losing two family members, and then I'm gonna be in charge of my stepson. And it was just very scary to deal with and then seeing her hour by hour literally get sick," Anaya said.
Thursday, December 28, 2023
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Wednesday, December 27, 2023
Who would Trump choose as vice president? Here's a list of potential candidates
#1:Who would Trump choose as vice president? Here's a list of potential candidates
WASHINGTON — Though the Republican presidential primaries and caucuses haven't started yet, former President Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the polls has already spurred debate over potential running mates.
Some names being floated are lawmakers who’ve said in interviews they would be interested in the job. Other names are generated when Trump meets with a high-profile supporter, which happened this week when he was spotted at Mar-a-Lago with Rep, Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., according to aides.
But his aides add that stories about an array of possible appointments − from running mate to White House chief of staff − are premature at best.
"Second term policy priorities and staffing decisions will not - in no uncertain terms - be led by anonymous or thinly sourced speculation in mainstream media news stories,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. "President Trump is solely focused on winning the Republican nomination for president."
Trump himself said in an interview with NBC in September that he hasn’t thought too much about the role but added he “likes the concept” of a woman as vice president.
"We're going to choose the best person," he said.
Either way, numerous political experts said loyalty would be a prime consideration for Trump as he chooses his running mate. And some of his supporters being floated as a running mate could very well end up on Trump’s ticket.
Here’s a look at some potential contenders.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who dropped out of the presidential race last month, was floated as a potential running mate early on in the primary race. Unlike some of his rivals, the lawmaker did not criticize Trump directly when he was on the campaign trail.
Scott worked on opportunity zones − a bipartisan initiative − in Trump's 2017 tax cut legislation. He is also 58 and Black, which would be key for Trump as he seeks to expand his coalition of supporters.
Trump was asked on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" whether he would choose Scott as a running mate in July, and said he thinks Scott is a “very good guy” and talented.
“We did opportunity zones together. It's never been talked about. It's one of the most successful economic development things ever done in this country. And Tim is very good,” Trump said. “I mean, I could see Tim doing something with the administration.”
Though Scott said he wouldn’t endorse anyone for the primary, he did defend Trump’s economic record and acknowledged his poll numbers in an interview with CNBC earlier this month.
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
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Monday, December 25, 2023
To beat Trump, Nikki Haley tries to expand coalition, and fast
#1:To beat Trump, Nikki Haley tries to expand coalition, and fast
CLEAR LAKE, Iowa (Reuters) - Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley has risen in opinion polls in recent months largely on the back of college-educated, affluent, suburban professionals, many of whom have tired of Donald Trump's caustic rhetoric and legal troubles.
If the former South Carolina governor is to ascend any further and have a real shot at beating Trump in the 2024 Republican nominating contest, supporters and opponents say, she must expand that coalition - and quickly.
That means pulling in more voters who live in rural areas, are middle- or working-class, or lack college degrees, according to eight pollsters and strategists interviewed by Reuters. Some are affiliated with the Haley nomination effort and some are independent.
Ahead of the Republican nominating kick-off in Iowa on Jan. 15, Haley has been traveling to Trump-friendly territory in the state, including a December campaign swing that took her through a deeply conservative area along its northern border.
She also launched a "Farmers for Nikki" coalition in November, while her campaign and its allies have blanketed the airwaves with ads in rural areas in an effort to build her name recognition and broaden her appeal.
In a barn with hand-hewn wooden beams in Spirit Lake and at a Clear Lake restaurant where a mounted bison head loomed large, Haley spoke this month about the small South Carolina town where she grew up that had only two traffic lights.
"The area I grew up in was much like Iowa," Haley told an audience in the town of Sioux Center. "I grew up playing in a cotton field and in a dairy farm."
She talked at length about shortcomings in the public healthcare system for America's veterans, which caters disproportionately to rural Americans. While she has stepped up her criticisms of Trump in recent months, saying that his management style is too chaotic and divisive to be effective, she did not bring up the former president much on the trail.
Trump leads his Republican rivals in Iowa with about 50% support, polls show. Haley, who was U.N. ambassador under Trump, is in a close third place behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Her numbers have moved up in recent weeks while DeSantis, once seen as a serious threat to Trump, has faltered.
Les Hardy, a truck driver at a local chick hatchery, braved bone-cold conditions to attend Haley's town hall in Clear Lake. He arrived undecided about which candidate to back, but said he was considering Trump.
After the event, Hardy said he was leaning toward Haley thanks to her straightforward answers to audience questions and what he described as her "down home" manner.
Most of his co-workers, however, stood behind the former president. "Trump is definitely number 1 in the majority of their eyes," Hardy said. "But number 2, it's anybody's race."
ROOM TO RISE
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in December, Trump led the Republican field nationally with 61% support, while Haley and DeSantis both stood at 11%. The winner of the Republican primary will take on Democratic President Joe Biden in November 2024.
Haley scooped up around a fifth of college-educated Republicans, while also outperforming among suburbanites. About seven-in-10 Republicans without a college degree backed Trump.
Internal polling from SFA, one of the outside PACs supporting Haley, also indicates she is outperforming in high-income, college-educated and suburban areas, according to an official there, who requested anonymity to discuss private polling and campaign strategy.
That official said Haley has room to grow with rural and non-college voters as they start paying more attention to the presidential race and become more familiar with her candidacy.
SFA has spent more than $25 million on ads and mailings backing her White House run since late September, when Haley began gaining serious traction among some major donors, and mid-December, according to disclosures made to the Federal Election Commission.
One recent spot by SFA focused on the struggles of the middle class, lamenting that "the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer."
"Nikki isn't taking any voter for granted," said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a campaign spokesperson. "She's traveling across Iowa holding town halls, answering every question and shaking every hand."
In New Hampshire, which will hold its primary a week after the Iowa caucuses and is a significantly more affluent state, Haley is in a clear second, behind Trump. In an internal poll conducted in mid-December and shared with Reuters by AFP Action, a political advocacy organization supporting Haley, she is statistically tied with Trump in a theoretical head-to-head match up there.
DeSantis campaign officials say Haley would fail to beat Trump in a one-on-one race because she does not appeal to voters who still admire the former president.
Interviews with 20 people at Haley's events in northwestern Iowa showed she was drawing some voters who were ready to move on from Trump, along with some still willing to consider him.
Of the 10 who wanted to move on, all were leaning toward Haley. Of the 10 who were still open to the former president, some preferred Haley, some preferred DeSantis and others said they would likely stick with Trump.
Toni Featherston, a 64-year-old nurse from Rockford, Iowa (pop. 758), said Haley impressed her.
While Featherston still likes Trump, she said his legal issues and propensity for making controversial statements that distract from policies make it unlikely he would accomplish everything he set out to achieve in a second term.
"Haley seems down to earth," Featherston said. "I like Trump, but I agree with Haley. That'd be too much chaos."
(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco and Jason Lange in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Alistair Bell)
Sunday, December 24, 2023
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